5 ms·

> "Find easy ways you can come across better." Listen, I know that we live in a world in which many things other than objective merit matter when it comes to s

> "Find easy ways you can come across better." Listen, I know that we live in a world in which many things other than objective merit matter when it comes to success/relationships/upward mobility. I realize there's psychology involved, perhaps even evolutionary psychology (i.e., hard to change). But I hate this advice. It reeks of elitism, with a nose high in the air. "Want success? Look good and smile." What about: "Find easy ways to be open and accepting of what others have to say, despite your instinct not to listen." Might be overthinking this one, but this line of thinking is frustrating.

kbenson 7y ago
> Might be overthinking this one, but this line of thinking is frustrating. I think maybe you are. I read "Find easy ways you can come across better." as "learn to communicate your intent clearer", as long as your normal mode of communication isn't being an asshole. If you're not an asshole, explaining yourself clearly and effectively without being too verbose is the same as coming across better. Edit: And if someone is an asshole, that can be interpreted as "find a way to be less of an asshole."
nxc18 7y ago
Having recently lost 80+ pounds (~40 to my goal) the transformation in how people perceive you is remarkable and very noticeable. Make no mistake, if you're very overweight, or otherwise visibly not taking care of yourself, you are absolutely losing opportunities. As a fat person, I know anti-fat bias is bulls hit; I also know it's really, really hard to control for. The advice may not apply to you, because past a certain point it does become elitism.
- cubano 7y ago
  Big time congrats on dropping the weight, and it's great to hear how it seems to be "noticeably" changing the way people perceive you. It's a very difficult thing to do, and ever since my younger son started battling (and winning) his weight issues, I have become much more sensitive to how unfairly some people treat overweight people.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  > As a fat person, I know anti-fat bias is bulls hit; Can you explain why you feel like this? I can definitely see why the opposite is true (visibly not taking care of yourself means your subconscious is more powerful than your conscious mind which doesn't breed trust) but find it hard to see any redeeming qualities in being overweight.
  - nxc18 7y ago
    There's nothing good about being overweight. However, being fat doesn't mean you're stupid or lazy. There's a skinny person inside every fatass. I lost the weight and I am not any more qualified to do any job than anyone else, but I know for sure job interviews would go a lot better. People automatically like a beautiful skinny person more than a fat person, and that's a huge bias to overcome.
    - jayalpha 7y ago
      "However, being fat doesn't mean you're stupid or lazy. " As a fat person you a) may not care about conventions. b) you have little self control c) you may be impulsive in things I don't have any friend who is seriously overweight and successful. But I know a shitload of people the other way around. I just tried recently to do business with a seriously overweight person and, feel free to blame me, would never do that again. So congrats for losing weight.
      - nxc18 7y ago
        I really don't think you understand what's involved in an eating disorder or how hard these attitudes make it to lose weight. If being fat really is just a personality failure (no self control, impulsivity), that would imply that fat people shouldn't even try; they're defective. There are serious environmental issues involved. For example, the stress of constantly being perceived as a non-person leads to serious anxiety and, for at least some fat people, self-hatred. I was never going to be successful making a change until I learned to love who I was, even when looking in the mirror. Fat-shaming attitudes do a lot of harm here. Really it's a behavioral health issue and should be treated as such, not shamed. I would also point out the links between obesity and for example poverty. Coming from a wealthy, successful background (did you have access to a gym growing up? Did your parents have time to teach you good habits? Could your family afford healthy nutrition?) can make it hard to empathize with that, but you don't really understand the problem until you do. I work with many people every day; I could pick any trait and cherry pick interactions to come up with all sorts of conclusions; fat people are very helpful; fat people are controlling; skinny people are fucking assholes; skinny people are great. You can justify any bias that way ("that black guy I worked with was terrible; won't do that again"). You might have no fat friends because you come into every interaction with a fat person prejudiced against them. You might not know any _successful_ fat people because society doesn't afford fat people the opportunities it does thin people. Edit: one more note: even for really motivated fat people trying to make a change, there's a lot of really bad advice out there. I've been successful in my transformation because I've ignored a lot of advice; e.g. I weigh myself every day to create a feedback loop. Doctors hate it. Or look at the demonization of fat and the promotion of sugar as a health food.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  There are actually studies that show that, at least for women, you can show that extra weight correlates to less salary: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=cus&q=women+weight+pay https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=c...
- rhizome 7y ago
  Recently I heard an interesting story on This American Life that speaks to this: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/589/tell-me-im-fat/act-two-3 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/589/tell-me-im-fat/act-two-...
eloff 7y ago
It's not elitism, it's pragmatism. Work is a collective, social endeavor. Getting along better with others is going to help, whether that's by communicating better, being generally more likable, or being tall and good looking (yeah, it sucks that this is a thing, but who are we kidding?) Most of these things are under your control, so work at getting better at your soft skills, they're at least as important as your technical expertise.
sethammons 7y ago
> "Find easy ways you can come across better" > ... for people trying to have a big social impact, there might be no more cost-effective self-improvement investment than enrolling in Toastmasters and buying a gym membership... I think you are right that we should be open and accepting. It just turns out that it is easier to do that towards people who are well spoken and have a good physical presence. I feel that people who speak poorly and don't take good care of themselves are kind of playing on hard mode when it comes to influencing others. Like you mention, this is likely embedded in our evolutionary psychology and is hard to change.
rajangdavis 7y ago
I think this piece of advice is pretty invaluable and I suspect that you might have the wrong impression of what this means. I take it as a call to learn how to communicate your thoughts effectively as well as understand what motivates other people. I worked in a technical consulting company and the most effective people were the ones that could sell their ideas to customers/ within our organization as well as deliver technically. I don't think it's enough to purely be a technical person or a good communicator, developing both skills are pretty crucial to getting ahead as well as work effectively in teams. The working out part is definitely a flex, but it something that most people should do but don't.
austincheney 7y ago
Fail. It sounds like you are confusing this point away from self-improvement only to redirect it towards arrogance and doubling down with defensiveness. You should always seek to improve yourself to perform and feel better regardless of the weak, sensitive, enviable people around you. Improvements that build confidence are internalizing qualities where arrogance, vanity, and acceptance are externalizing qualities. I have seen insecure people get upset when someone else takes risks with originality. Ignore the insecure people.
icebraining 7y ago
Recognizing that elitism exists and affects you is not the same as being elitist. "The great achievement of the Enlightenment had been to show that might is not necessarily right. The mistake they made was to assume that the law of the strong had suddenly evaporated simply because it had been shown to be unjust."
- skummetmaelk 7y ago
  Where is this from?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    The exact wording is from a Wikipedia editor, but it's just a reformulation of the writings of John Bew in his book "Realpolitik: A History", which I recommend. Specifically, he's talking about the ideas of the 19th century German writer and politician Ludwig von Rochau, who originally coined the word "realpolitik".
nwallin 7y ago
I'm not entirely sure what your objection is. Forgive me if it seems like I'm talking past you; that's not my intent, but I don't really know how to address your argument head on. But I think that advice is very good advice. It's worked for me at least. About a year ago I started dressing significantly better. T shirt and jeans to dress shirt and slacks. It has made a substantial improvement on my quality of life. People are much nicer to me, which is nice, but the thing that surprised me the most was the extent to which people take my ideas at work more seriously. If I prose something, people are much more likely to go along with it. My confidence has gone up as well. After having gone from getting blown off when I propose ideas (and then having someone else "come up with" them and getting credit for it later) to having those same ideas get taken seriously and implemented had made me a lot more likely to propose things. It's not as if my company's corporate culture values these things either. Dress code is basically no flipflops. Has my objective merit gotten any better? Are my ideas or execution any better than they used to be? Absolutely not. But I'm more successful, and more importantly happier than I used to be. It's a very small thing which has made an outsized improvement. That's his point I think, not that you need to do these things to be successful, or that the little things are more important than the big things, but pick the low hanging fruit before you start stretching for the things which are out of reach. Sometimes the things that have the highest ROI are the things with minimal investment and mediocre return. String ten of those little things together and you might find you've got what you need out of your nine to five.

kbenson 7y ago

> Might be overthinking this one, but this line of thinking is frustrating. I think maybe you are. I read "Find easy ways you can come across better." as "learn to communicate your intent clearer", as long as your normal mode of communication isn't being an asshole. If you're not an asshole, explaining yourself clearly and effectively without being too verbose is the same as coming across better. Edit: And if someone is an asshole, that can be interpreted as "find a way to be less of an asshole."

nxc18 7y ago

Having recently lost 80+ pounds (~40 to my goal) the transformation in how people perceive you is remarkable and very noticeable. Make no mistake, if you're very overweight, or otherwise visibly not taking care of yourself, you are absolutely losing opportunities. As a fat person, I know anti-fat bias is bulls hit; I also know it's really, really hard to control for. The advice may not apply to you, because past a certain point it does become elitism.

cubano 7y ago
Big time congrats on dropping the weight, and it's great to hear how it seems to be "noticeably" changing the way people perceive you. It's a very difficult thing to do, and ever since my younger son started battling (and winning) his weight issues, I have become much more sensitive to how unfairly some people treat overweight people.
rorykoehler 7y ago
> As a fat person, I know anti-fat bias is bulls hit; Can you explain why you feel like this? I can definitely see why the opposite is true (visibly not taking care of yourself means your subconscious is more powerful than your conscious mind which doesn't breed trust) but find it hard to see any redeeming qualities in being overweight.
- nxc18 7y ago
  There's nothing good about being overweight. However, being fat doesn't mean you're stupid or lazy. There's a skinny person inside every fatass. I lost the weight and I am not any more qualified to do any job than anyone else, but I know for sure job interviews would go a lot better. People automatically like a beautiful skinny person more than a fat person, and that's a huge bias to overcome.
  - jayalpha 7y ago
    "However, being fat doesn't mean you're stupid or lazy. " As a fat person you a) may not care about conventions. b) you have little self control c) you may be impulsive in things I don't have any friend who is seriously overweight and successful. But I know a shitload of people the other way around. I just tried recently to do business with a seriously overweight person and, feel free to blame me, would never do that again. So congrats for losing weight.
    - nxc18 7y ago
      I really don't think you understand what's involved in an eating disorder or how hard these attitudes make it to lose weight. If being fat really is just a personality failure (no self control, impulsivity), that would imply that fat people shouldn't even try; they're defective. There are serious environmental issues involved. For example, the stress of constantly being perceived as a non-person leads to serious anxiety and, for at least some fat people, self-hatred. I was never going to be successful making a change until I learned to love who I was, even when looking in the mirror. Fat-shaming attitudes do a lot of harm here. Really it's a behavioral health issue and should be treated as such, not shamed. I would also point out the links between obesity and for example poverty. Coming from a wealthy, successful background (did you have access to a gym growing up? Did your parents have time to teach you good habits? Could your family afford healthy nutrition?) can make it hard to empathize with that, but you don't really understand the problem until you do. I work with many people every day; I could pick any trait and cherry pick interactions to come up with all sorts of conclusions; fat people are very helpful; fat people are controlling; skinny people are fucking assholes; skinny people are great. You can justify any bias that way ("that black guy I worked with was terrible; won't do that again"). You might have no fat friends because you come into every interaction with a fat person prejudiced against them. You might not know any _successful_ fat people because society doesn't afford fat people the opportunities it does thin people. Edit: one more note: even for really motivated fat people trying to make a change, there's a lot of really bad advice out there. I've been successful in my transformation because I've ignored a lot of advice; e.g. I weigh myself every day to create a feedback loop. Doctors hate it. Or look at the demonization of fat and the promotion of sugar as a health food.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
There are actually studies that show that, at least for women, you can show that extra weight correlates to less salary: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=cus&q=women+weight+pay https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=c...
rhizome 7y ago
Recently I heard an interesting story on This American Life that speaks to this: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/589/tell-me-im-fat/act-two-3 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/589/tell-me-im-fat/act-two-...

eloff 7y ago

It's not elitism, it's pragmatism. Work is a collective, social endeavor. Getting along better with others is going to help, whether that's by communicating better, being generally more likable, or being tall and good looking (yeah, it sucks that this is a thing, but who are we kidding?) Most of these things are under your control, so work at getting better at your soft skills, they're at least as important as your technical expertise.

sethammons 7y ago

> "Find easy ways you can come across better" > ... for people trying to have a big social impact, there might be no more cost-effective self-improvement investment than enrolling in Toastmasters and buying a gym membership... I think you are right that we should be open and accepting. It just turns out that it is easier to do that towards people who are well spoken and have a good physical presence. I feel that people who speak poorly and don't take good care of themselves are kind of playing on hard mode when it comes to influencing others. Like you mention, this is likely embedded in our evolutionary psychology and is hard to change.

rajangdavis 7y ago

I think this piece of advice is pretty invaluable and I suspect that you might have the wrong impression of what this means. I take it as a call to learn how to communicate your thoughts effectively as well as understand what motivates other people. I worked in a technical consulting company and the most effective people were the ones that could sell their ideas to customers/ within our organization as well as deliver technically. I don't think it's enough to purely be a technical person or a good communicator, developing both skills are pretty crucial to getting ahead as well as work effectively in teams. The working out part is definitely a flex, but it something that most people should do but don't.

austincheney 7y ago

Fail. It sounds like you are confusing this point away from self-improvement only to redirect it towards arrogance and doubling down with defensiveness. You should always seek to improve yourself to perform and feel better regardless of the weak, sensitive, enviable people around you. Improvements that build confidence are internalizing qualities where arrogance, vanity, and acceptance are externalizing qualities. I have seen insecure people get upset when someone else takes risks with originality. Ignore the insecure people.

icebraining 7y ago

Recognizing that elitism exists and affects you is not the same as being elitist. "The great achievement of the Enlightenment had been to show that might is not necessarily right. The mistake they made was to assume that the law of the strong had suddenly evaporated simply because it had been shown to be unjust."

skummetmaelk 7y ago
Where is this from?
- icebraining 7y ago
  The exact wording is from a Wikipedia editor, but it's just a reformulation of the writings of John Bew in his book "Realpolitik: A History", which I recommend. Specifically, he's talking about the ideas of the 19th century German writer and politician Ludwig von Rochau, who originally coined the word "realpolitik".

nwallin 7y ago

I'm not entirely sure what your objection is. Forgive me if it seems like I'm talking past you; that's not my intent, but I don't really know how to address your argument head on. But I think that advice is very good advice. It's worked for me at least. About a year ago I started dressing significantly better. T shirt and jeans to dress shirt and slacks. It has made a substantial improvement on my quality of life. People are much nicer to me, which is nice, but the thing that surprised me the most was the extent to which people take my ideas at work more seriously. If I prose something, people are much more likely to go along with it. My confidence has gone up as well. After having gone from getting blown off when I propose ideas (and then having someone else "come up with" them and getting credit for it later) to having those same ideas get taken seriously and implemented had made me a lot more likely to propose things. It's not as if my company's corporate culture values these things either. Dress code is basically no flipflops. Has my objective merit gotten any better? Are my ideas or execution any better than they used to be? Absolutely not. But I'm more successful, and more importantly happier than I used to be. It's a very small thing which has made an outsized improvement. That's his point I think, not that you need to do these things to be successful, or that the little things are more important than the big things, but pick the low hanging fruit before you start stretching for the things which are out of reach. Sometimes the things that have the highest ROI are the things with minimal investment and mediocre return. String ten of those little things together and you might find you've got what you need out of your nine to five.